Abductions and forced labor - The
abduction of civilians by the AFRC/RUF was commonplace. People of all ages
were abducted, but young men, women, and girls and boys were preferred
targets. The forced labor included work in diamond mines captured by the
rebels.

Many people captured by the AFRC/RUF
who escaped or were released testified to Human Rights Watch that they were
forced to “carry loads” and perform other tasks. The civilians were
collected or called upon individually to transport property looted by the
fighters. They prepared food for the soldiers and performed any task
required of them to contribute to meeting the daily needs of the soldiers.

Acts of terrorism - The term terrorism has
no universally agreed-upon definition. Recurring themes include violence
with a political or social purpose, an attempt to intimidate, and directing
attacks on civilians and other noncombatants. Terrorism is more than simple
violence that requires only two parties, an aggressor and a victim.
Terrorism needs a third party, who might be intimidated by what happened to
the victim.

Acts often described as
terrorism have been banned by treaties on international humanitarian law (IHL)
and treaties establishing international crimes. These include the Fourth
Geneva Convention of 1949 and its two Additional Protocols of 1977. They
outlaw terrorism during international and internal armed conflict, insofar
as terrorism is understood to mean attacks directed against civilians.
Although the term terrorism is often understood to refer to acts by groups
that are not part of the State, an important category of terrorist acts is
those carried out or sponsored by a State (directly or indirectly), or
implicitly sanctioned by a State even when its own police or military
forces are not involved, such as in the use of death squads.

AFRC - Armed Forces Revolutionary Council (a
group of rogue army units who aligned themselves to the Revolutionary
United Front), also referred to as "Junta", "SLA" and "ex-SLA".

APC- All People's Congress

Attacks on UNAMSIL personnel - On
May 1, 2000 in Makeni, Sierra Leone, RUF militants kidnapped at least 20
members of the United Nations Assistance Mission in Sierra Leone (UNAMSIL)
and surrounded and opened fire on a UNAMSIL facility, according to press reports.

Collective punishments - Under
the 1949 Geneva Conventions, collective punishments are a war crime.
Article 33 of the Fourth Convention states: “No protected person may be
punished for an offense he or she has not personally committed,” and
“collective penalties and likewise all measures of intimidation or of
terrorism are prohibited.”

By collective punishment, the
drafters of the Geneva Conventions had in mind the reprisal killings
carried out in the two world wars.. In the First World War, Germans
executed Belgian villagers in retribution for resistance activity. In World
War II, Nazis carried out a form of collective punishment to suppress
resistance. The conventions, to counter this, reiterated the principle of
individual responsibility. The International Committee of the Red Cross (ICRC)
Commentary to the conventions states that parties to a conflict often would
resort to “intimidatory measures to terrorize the population” in hopes of
preventing hostile acts, but such practices “strike at guilty and innocent
alike. They are opposed to all principles based on humanity and justice.”

Crimes against humanity -
According to the International Criminal Court, crimes against humanity
include crimes such as the extermination of civilians, enslavement,
torture, rape, forced pregnancy, deportation, persecution on political,
racial, national, ethnic, cultural, religious or gender grounds, and
enforced disappearances-but only when they are part of a widespread or
systematic attack directed against a civilian population. The "widespread
or systematic" qualification for crimes against humanity is very important,
as it provides a higher threshold and differentiates it from random acts of
violence-such as rape, murder, or even torture-that could be carried out,
even by soldiers in uniform, but which may not actually qualify as crimes
against humanity.

ECOMOG - Economic Community of West African
States Monitoring Group

ECOWAS - Economic Community of West African
States

Ethnic Cleansing - Literal translation of the Serbo-Croat term 'etnicko
ciscenje', which was coined by Serbian fighters in Bosnia and used in mass
media reports as early as 1991. The term was most often used in the final
phase of combat, to describe taking total control of the conquered
territory. According to the U.S. State Department, ethnic cleansing
generally entails the systematic and forced removal of members of one
ethnic group by another group in order to change (or “cleanse”) the ethnic
composition of a region. It includes:

1. Forced expulsions

2. Looting and Burning

3. Detentions

4. Summary Execution

5. Rape

6. Violations of Medical Neutrality

7. Identity Cleansing

Genocide - According to the International
Criminal Court, genocide is defined as any of the following acts committed
with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnical, racial
or religious group, as such:

1. Killing members of the group

2. Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group

3. Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to
bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part

4. Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group

5. Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group

Looting and burning - Witnesses,
particularly from the eastern suburbs of Kissy, Wellington, and Calaba Town
observed pro-government CDF-Kamajor fighters looting property from the
homes of civilians who had fled the fighting. Thousands of civilians
moved from the eastern areas to take shelter in the homes of relatives and
in camps of displaced people, leaving entire neighborhoods largely
unoccupied. Witnesses described the CDF-Kamajors going into these areas
ostensibly to search and secure them, but then leaving with bundles of
clothes, electrical items, radios, and other items. Once civilians
reoccupied their homes, the looting decreased significantly.

OFR - Operation Focus Relief - First announced by President Clinton in 2000. Intended to provide military training and equipment to African battalions for peace keeping operations in Sierra Leone. Lasted from May 2001 to August 2001.

RUF - Revolutionary United Front. The main rebel
group led by Foday Sankoh. Special Court prosecutors alleged the RUF was
founded in Libya in the late 1980s under the patronage of Muammar Gaddafi.
The organization had only a vague political platform, nominally committed
to ending poverty and government corruption.

SCSL - Special Court for Sierra Leone.
Established in 2002 through a treaty between the United Nations and the
government of Sierra Leone. The SCSL is the world’s first mixed or
“hybrid” court. A similar tribunal is being planned for Cambodia.

Sexual violence – According to human
rights groups, throughout Sierra Leone’s nine year conflict there
was widespread and systematic sexual violence against women and girls
including individual and gang rape, sexual assault with objects such as
firewood, umbrellas and sticks, and sexual slavery. In thousands of cases,
sexual violence preceded and followed the abduction of women and girls
and forced bondage to male combatants in slavery-like conditions often
accompanied by forced labor. These sexual crimes are most often
characterized by extraordinary brutality and are frequently preceded or
followed by violent acts against other family members. The rebel factions
use sexual violence as a weapon to terrorize, humiliate, punish and
ultimately control the civilian population into submission.

TRC - Truth and Reconciliation Commission.
Established in 2001 to work in coordination with the Special Court. The
commission’s mandate is to establish a history of the conflict and deal
with cases and suspects covered by a national

UNAMSIL - United Nations Mission in Sierra
Leone

UNDP - United Nations Development Program

Unlawful killings - Extermination,
mass murder of civilian men, women and children, carried out primarily to
terrorize the civilian population and punish it for failure to provide
sufficient support to the RUF.

Use of child soldiers - While
the employment of children in war has occurred for millennia, in
recent years the number of children bearing arms has increased
dramatically. The UN Report
on the Impact of Armed Conflict on Children, estimated that in 1995 and
1996 alone, 250,000 children were serving either in government armies or in
opposition forces.

The 1998 Rome Statute for an
International Criminal Court lists as a war crime conscription or
enlistment of children under the age of fifteen into a State’s armed forces
or using them to participate actively in hostilities.

The 1989 Convention on the
Rights of the Child (UNCRC), (which the United States does not recognize)
defines a child as a person below the age of eighteen, but sets fifteen as
a minimum age for going to war.

War crimes - According to the International
Criminal Court, war crimes include grave breaches of the Geneva Conventions
and other serious violations of the laws and customs that can be applied in
international armed conflict, and in armed conflict "not of an
international character", as listed in the Statute, when they are committed
as part of a plan or policy or on a large scale. These may include, but are
not limited to:

1. Violence to life, health and physical or mental well-being of persons,
in particular murder as well as cruel treatment such as torture, mutilation
or any form of corporal punishment

2. Collective punishments

3. Taking of hostages

4. Acts of terrorism

5. Outrages upon personal dignity, in particular humiliating and degrading
treatment, rape, enforced prostitution and any form of indecent assault

6. Pillage

7. The passing of sentences and the carrying out of executions without
previous judgment pronounced by a regularly constituted court, affording
all the judicial guarantees which are recognized as indispensable by
civilized peoples